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INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUE ETHICS

Ethics Lecture 5 – July 11, 2012. INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUE ETHICS. Normative ethical theory. A person is virtuous if the person has the unity of the virtues of character expounded by the given virtue theory.

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INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUE ETHICS

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  1. Ethics Lecture 5 – July 11, 2012 INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUE ETHICS

  2. Normative ethical theory

  3. A person is virtuous if the person has the unity of the virtues of character expounded by the given virtue theory. A person is vicious if the person lacks the virtues of character expounded by the given virtue theory. A person is morally chaotic if there are no consistent habits of character against which to make moral judgments. Evaluation of character

  4. An action is obligatory if a virtuous person would do the given action (when acting virtuously). An action is forbidden if a virtuous person would not do the given action (that is, no one with the given virtues would do the action). An action is permissible if a virtuous person could do the given action (when acting virtuously). Evaluation of action

  5. Human flourishing/virtue is intrinsically good. • Vice is intrinsically bad. • Everything else is value-neutral: • A thing or state of affairs is extrinsically good if it aids the virtuous person in their flourishing. • A thing or state of affairs is extrinsically bad if it hinders the flourishing of the virtuous. Evaluation of value

  6. Aristotle’s account ofhappiness and human flourishing

  7. The highest good for human beings is happiness (eu-daimonia), a.k.a “human flourishing.” • There are three “happy” lives: • the life of pleasure (not really)* • the life of honor (political life) • the life of study (contemplation) • Aristotle will argue that the life of contemplation is the happiest life of all. The summumbonum

  8. What does it mean to say that a human is flourishing? The function of X determines whether X is good or not, successful or not, or valuable or not. The function of human beings: “we take the human function to be a certain kind of life, and take this life to be an activity and actions of the soul that involve reason . . . so the human good proves to be activity of the soul in accord with virtue . . . in a complete life” (1098a 13-19). The function argument

  9. It is not a gift from the gods, although the gods would want humans to flourish. It is not something that can be “learned” academically. Happiness “requires both complete virtue and a complete life. It needs a complete life because life includes many reversals of fortune, good and bad” (1100a 5-6). Hence, happiness is not the result of fortune or “luck.” Happiness is the result of habituation

  10. Habituation of rational nature

  11. What are the virtues?

  12. Virtues are not feelings (after all, feelings can be changed or manipulated). • Virtues are not capacities (after all, one might be able to be brave yet be a coward). • Virtues are statesor ways of being. • Thus the brave person is brave and acts bravely. • The coward is therefore not brave and, surprise surprise, does not act bravely. Virtues are states

  13. “Virtue, then, is a state that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason, that is to say, to the reason by reference to which the prudent person would define it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency” (1107a 1-4). • Virtues are character traits that help one know what to do and how to make moral judgments. • The mean is relative to us, meaning that what is the mean for one person may not be the mean for another person. THIS IS NOT RELATIVISM! • The mean is defined by reference to reason such that any prudent (practically wise) person would agree on it for a particular person. • Means are not “mathematical” but “practical.” Virtues are always closer to one of their vices; rarely are they neutrally between the two extreme positions. Virtue defined

  14. SOME VIRTUES AND VICES

  15. SOME VIRTUES AND VICES (cont.)

  16. “…it is also hard work to be excellent. For in each case it is hard work to find the intermediate” (1109a 25-26). • Steps to virtue: • “[S]teer clear of the more contrary extreme”(1109a 32). • “[E]xamine what we ourselves drift into easily . . . [and] drag ourselves off in the contrary direction” (1109b 1-7). • “And in everything we must beware above all of pleasure and its sources; for we are biased in its favor when we come to judge it” (1109b 8-9). Learning the virtues

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